Beyond the initial preparations, here you are paid for doing nothing.

My biggest problem is not knowing what to do with myself. It could be argued that this isn’t limited to the question of what I will do when I stand on that plinth, but putting the irrelevant stuff to one side I am still slightly at a loss as to what to do.

Anthony Gormley has personally, and without considering my feelings on the matter, set me a challenge. The fact that I applied is irrelevant as he had this damned idea in the first place, and it seemed so good. Now that I have won my slot I have to start thinking about it. Lots. It’s OK for Mr Gormley to have the meta idea, but he is now walking away and leaving the hard bit to the 2400 living statues that will each bring their own interpretation of “art” to the table (plinth) whether they like it or not.

So what have I got to work with? Well, there’s the rules. They are pretty straightforward really – you can take whatever you can carry, you can do whatever you want. Nothing illegal, and there isn’t any power supply. Beyond that, the possibilities are endless. So why do I want to do the sort of stuff that I would normally do if I had an hour to spare?

Here was my initial thought.  Take a fold up chair, a laptop and a mobile dongle. I could use the Internet, blog here perhaps, take some photos and post them, maybe even play a little World of Warcraft. And why not? The artist has gone to great lengths to ensure that the demographic of “plinthers” (is that a word?) closely matches the make up of the UK population, so why not represent that major slice of the population that would spend free time on the Internet playing games.

It’s a great idea. It is like life imitating art imitating more art. Or something. Unfortunately I suspect that every other person is going to be taking their laptops up on high and doing precisely the same thing. It does represent what people do, but wow, it is boring.

I raised this question a while back to some friends and their responses were not completely helpful.

1. Feed the pigeons.

2. Have someone in Trafalgar Square throw fruit at me.

3. Get my willy out.

4. Throw fruit at people in Trafalgar Square.

I am sure there are better ideas out there, the question is, are they things I would want to do and would I be brave enough.

I am definitely going to take a photo of a cuddly toy, but perhaps that is a story for another time.

A successful reconnaissance

I have spent all day, near enough, getting myself ready for this moment. I have installed Wordpress, removed it, installed it again and uploaded some files. Activated it (which was disturbingly easy) and then played about with some themes. I didn’t like the fact that none of the themes had my photo built in, so I spent a couple of hours creating a banner photo and then trying to work out how to integrate it into the page.

And it works!

This doesn’t surprise me since I normally get things to work. It does however leave me with one small problem, and that is how to start this blog.

Perhaps I will never work that bit out. What I do know is that the default title that the people at Wordpress give to their first example post seems completely appropriate, and it also appeals to my sense of humour.

Anyway – a big “Hi” to you!

At midday on July 24th 2009 I am going to stand on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for an hour, and right at this moment I am not clear exactly what I am going to do there.